At Webzine 2005, sort of liveblogging
Justin Hall and Annalee Newitz are the conf MC’s. I’m not usually a big fan of liveblogging, but I’m going to update this post today and tomorrow for anyone interesting in the comings and goings of Webzine 2005.
Levelling the Playing Field: Journalism Online
Agh, panels of sort of journalists talking about “new media.” Needs more controversy.
Jacob Appelbaum, Featured Speaker
Jacob Appelbaum was rousing. Slideshow at random in the background, discussion on the front channel. I first heard about Jacob on Boingboing (here and here). Dude went to Iraq after his dad died, or was killed at the hands of some heroin junkies. Very frustrated with American policy internationally and domestically, after having recently traveled to Houston Astrodome and New Orleans after Katrina.
Rich Media Tools Workshop
Josh Kinberg, the Bikes against Bush guy is here, and he’s working on a video blogging client called FireANT, which I heard about first at the BlogHer conference. There’s a demo at 3:30, but I can’t miss the sex blog session next.
JD Lasica, Darknet author, talking about Ourmedia, a new front end to the Internet Archive.
O’Reilly recently published an interview with JD that I haven’t read yet. I can’t tell if that’s because I’m becoming kind of numb to the content I produce, or if the content isn’t compelling for various reasons—because on the surface, we publish a lot of interesting stuff. And if I could identify the weak spots, maybe I could help improve our sites.
Mike Hudack of bliptv.
Dave Toole of Outhink, creating a content collaboration tool called SpinXpress. Sounds like Ian Clarke’s Freenet, sounds like Nullsoft’s WASTE.
Liveblogging is hard, mostly cause I like all my stuff to be linked up, and mostly because I didn’t get access to the wireless until 2:30.
Annalee is very concerned about everyone getting laid. At least everyone that wants to. No joke. Wear a Webzine button your sleeve if you want to hook up tonight.
18 or Over Only: A Look at the Laws, Technology, and Style of Adult Sites
A lot of FUD about anti-porn laws, and it’s not that this isn’t something we shouldn’t fight, or be concerned about, but it’s a little overbearing. I mean, Violet Blue and Tina Butcher (a suicide girl) are on the panel and they’ve barely gotten a word in edgewise. Guess I was expecting more titilation and less strum und drung.
Finally some sanity from David Steinberg: don’t panic. Fight the man, but avoid the chilling effect at the same time.
Podcasting: The Democratization of Broadcast?
RU Sirius (of Mondo 2000 fame) on a panel about podcasting. Cool.
Hacking Gadgets and Electronics
I finally got to see the Phillip Torrone show, and I admit, it was quite good. Which is strange because he works for O’Reilly as an editor and blogger for Make Magazine.
But why am I blogging anymore? I should be out in seach of life and more importantly, food.
The Art of Distribution: RSS, Tagging
Niall Kennedy of Technorati, RSS geek. Ok, basic RSS details… Nothing really new here. But I’m thinking about some site design changes I’d like to make.
Video Blogging Panel
Moderated by Schlomo Rabinowitz, whoa this guy’s name really is Schlomo? Yey, let’s watch Meet the Vloggers courtesy of Zadi Diaz (KarmaGrrrl).
Hmm, I wonder if you could mount a little Canon Digital camera to a harmonica holder for personal videoblogging? Kind of a 21st century Bob Dylan?
Bre Pretis (I make things) started We are the Media. Is FireANT or something like it going to be the new TV?
Renegade Rene (Luxomedia) working on viral video art project called The Green Thing. Emphasis on collaboration, mixing, remixing videos online.
Rocketboom mentioned, a three minute daily videoblog based in New York City.
Got to see Ryanne on a videoblogging panel at BlogHer, but because of lack of internet, didn’t blog much about it. But she mentioned freevlog that I’ve been meaning to check out.
You Are The Media: Video Blogging 101
Speak of the devil, the workshop is following along with the steps outlined at freevlog. Pretty basic, seems to rely on Quicktime Pro (on Mac or Windows) for most basic video editing functions.
Reminds me of another article I produced for O’Reilly’s Digital Media site, What Is Vlogging (and How to Get Started). I’d really like more technical detail about video/sound formats, codecs, settings, etc.
Microformats: What the Hell Are They and Why Should I Care?
Ryan King from Technorati on microformats, presentation here. This is a smart idea, got to see Tantek give a similar presentation at FOO Camp last month.
Rather than cooking up your own XML DTD/Schema, the microformats guys are advising using a combination of XHTML (which is XML afterall) and class attributes to create structured data for things like blogrolls (XFN), contact information (hCard), and calendaring (hCalendar).
One of the principles Tantek stressed (at FOO Camp) was that “invisible metadata deteriorates.” I wonder what my librarian friends would say about that? The benefit of XHTML is that browsers already exist on every platform to display whatever you markup. Using a combination of tags and CSS, create a format the benefits the user first, and the machine second.
Featured Speaker: Jonas Luster
Rant. Says a hole in a sheet of paper (that your can’t see the hole, just the matter around it and the matter behind it) is analogous with social networks. Reminds me of my dad being displeased with the name donut holes—he’d rather they be called “anti-holes.” Back to social networking, what exists is you and me interacting, the social part, or bond, is the result. And thus social networking software is bunk, in his humble opinion. Not a good sign for the O’Reilly Connection. He’s not a fan of the “long tail” concept either, because he’s a sociology phd. Perhaps I should entertain him with my Web 2.0 drinking game.
Doing Information Architecture On the Cheap
Eh. I don’t think IA is bad, per se, but that people who “practice” IA have such a hard time defining what they do or how it’s different from usability or interaction design, often gives me pause.
Someone said card sort. Take a shot. The most disappointing google search evar: “information architecture drinking game”.
And this concludes my liveblogging for the weekend. Now off to find food with Mark.
Hey :). Actually, I don’t like to “Long Tail”, because it’s old, used in the wrong context, and makes people look like parrots. What a room full of incredibly bright and talented people, and still everyone parrots some other bright and talented guy. There’s Linux robots, creative Ad sales, and putting movies on the Internet, and we invent, we create, we design. But when it comes to things like the Long Tail, we become sheep, echo what we read. Invent, Adapt, Adopt, Improve. We have the brains for it, let’s use them :)
Sure, sure, but whereas content and creation are as diverse as the number of creators, the general principal of business (make more money than you spend) tends to be less varied.
When content creators refer to the “long tail” (which I mock in my drinking game post) they’re referencing an idea popularized by Wired, originating with Pareto that infinite inventory means you can reap many small profits across the entire inventory. Given that most content creators aren’t great business people, that idea on the surface sounds pretty compelling.
The reality for most bloggers is that they’ll probably be able to cover their hosting costs, not their rent.
Levelling the Playing Field: Journalism Online at Webzine 2005
Today I moderated a panel I put together on journalism in our crazy, fast-paced, ultra-modern online world (or something like that) for Webzine. Nicole Lee, Daniel Terdiman, Adriel Hampton, Glenda Bautista and George Kelly answered my questions and…
awesome – was dropping by to see what you said about Web 2.1 when I came across these notes from WebZine. Thank you for putting them together, I really did not get enough of the URL’s mentioned into my notebook during the day.
Also, your format is really cool but your style is even better. Great perspective on the world – I laughed so hard when I did the most disappointing search on Google evar – cant even imagine it…
Chris, I passed up Web 2.0 this week (and I could have gone for free) but I’m seriously considering dropping by Web 2.1, just to stay on the cutting edge, you know.